earn the habit of seeing things as they
appear. Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions
that cause most trouble in philosophy--the distinction between
'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they
are. The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man
and the philosopher want to know what they are; but the philosopher's
wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more
troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that
there is no colour which pre-eminently appears to be _the_ colour of the
table, or even of any one particular part of the table--it appears to
be of different colours from different points of view, and there is
no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than
others. And we know that even from a given point of view the colour will
seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a
man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour
at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged. This
colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something
depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls
on the table. When, in ordinary life, we speak of _the_ colour of the
table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a
normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions
of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions
have just as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid
favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any
one particular colour.
The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see
the grain, but otherwise the table looks smooth and even. If we looked
at it through a microscope, we should see roughnesses and hills and
valleys, and all sorts of differences that are imperceptible to the
naked eye. Which of these is the 'real' table? We are naturally tempted
to say that what we see through the microscope is more real, but that in
turn would be changed by a still more powerful microscope. If, then, we
cannot trust what we see with the naked eye, why should we trust what we
see through a microscope? Thus, again, the confidence in our senses with
which we began deserts us.
The shape of the table is no better. We
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